FIREStarter: LSU Partners with Louisiana State Police, Industry to Train Hundreds of New Cybersecurity Professionals, Deploy Cyber Range with State Support
New initiative stacks cybersecurity expertise and assets to help secure Louisiana and bridge a critical 500,000 U.S. workforce gap.

Through FIREStarter and the new LSU cyber range, students and partners, including
Louisiana State Police, will be able to simulate real-time cyberattacks on large-scale
enterprise and control systems, including schools, hospitals, and chemical and industrial
plants. The effort aligns Louisiana experts and assets to bridge a critical workforce
gap for cybersecurity professionals (estimated at 500,000 unfilled jobs in the U.S.,
with starting salaries around $90K) and have a profound impact on the economy and
security of Louisiana and the nation.
Elsa Hahne/LSU
BATON ROUGE, September 14, 2021—Through its new Cybersecurity Talent Initiative Fund, the Louisiana Board of Regents
is investing $185,911 in LSU in a broad workforce development effort to rapidly train
more cybersecurity professionals. The initiative, called FIREStarter, will engage
both traditional and non-traditional students through the establishment of a cyber
range—a new Forensic and Incident Response Environment, or “FIRE” in FIREStarter—in
the LSU Digital Media Center on the main campus. The range technology, provided by
Cyber Range Solutions, Inc., will be supported by data and instruction through a partnership
with Louisiana State Police, whose Cyber Crime Unit investigates cyberattacks against
state-operated networks, including critical infrastructure, local agencies, and K-12
schools.
Program participants will leverage LONI, the Louisiana Optical Network Infrastructure—a
high-speed optical network managed by LSU that connects 20 universities and 63 technical
and community colleges—to port real-time threat data into the LSU cyber range. There,
about 100 students per semester will gain hands-on experience analyzing and defending
against cyberattacks and emergent malware, including ransomware.
“Given the current workforce gap in Louisiana and across the nation, it’s imperative that we get students interested early and then give them the skills to make a difference.”—LSU Professor Golden G. Richard, III
“Every organization in the U.S. needs the ability to prevent, stop, and respond to
cybersecurity attacks, and determine what was compromised or lost. Given the current
workforce gap in Louisiana and across the nation, it’s imperative that we get students
interested early and then give them the skills to make a difference in improving the
cybersecurity posture of both the state and the country,” said Golden G. Richard,
III, LSU professor of computer science, associate director for cybersecurity at the
LSU Center for Computation & Technology, and FIREStarter faculty lead.
FIREStarter will become part of a growing effort, led by Richard, to train more highly
skilled cybersecurity professionals at LSU. In 2019, he and an interdisciplinary team
of investigators received $3.4 million from the National Science Foundation to establish
the LSU Scholarships for Service (SFS) program, which offers students generous scholarships
and guaranteed jobs upon graduation. Just this year, LSU was also chosen by the National
Security Agency (NSA) as the first non-member university to pilot the new designation
process for their Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) program, the top designation for cybersecurity in higher education in the United States,
with 23 universities currently participating.
Louisiana State Police partnered with FIREStarter as part of the mission of the new
Louisiana Cyber Investigators Alliance, which Louisiana State Police was charged by
the state legislature to build last year. The partnership will help train law enforcement
officers on digital forensics techniques and standard procedures for conducting investigations
involving computer and network compromises.
Cyber Range Solutions, Inc., the technology provider for the LSU cyber range, is a
national leader in cybersecurity experiential training platforms based in San Antonio,
Texas.
“We’re honored to partner with LSU on this exciting opportunity,” said CRS CEO Bash
Kazi. “The need for workforce development in cybersecurity in the U.S. is tremendous
and our unique tool will undoubtedly enhance those efforts in Louisiana. LSU joins
an impressive group—among the 16 academic institutions we’ve partnered with so far,
7 are CAE-designated.”
“We see this partnership with LSU and the FIREStarter program as an excellent opportunity to provide students with direct cyber workforce experience in support of our customers.”—Heath Berry, vice president of electronic systems and cyber technologies at Radiance Technologies
One of LSU’s key industry partners on FIREStarter is Radiance Technologies, a defense
contractor based in Huntsville, Alabama that provides cybersecurity solutions for
the intelligence community, armed services, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Radiance will provide immersive internships for LSU FIREStarter students.
“We invest in a superior technical workforce to develop leaders and encourage innovation
to tackle the nation’s toughest technical challenges,” said Heath Berry, vice president
of electronic systems and cyber technologies at Radiance Technologies. “We see this
partnership with LSU and the FIREStarter program as an excellent opportunity to provide
students with direct cyber workforce experience in support of our customers.”
Radiance has previously worked with LSU on cyber research initiatives.
“We look forward to continuing this relationship long-term and supporting the research
ecosystem in Baton Rouge and our continued investment in Louisiana,” Berry said.
According to Anas “Nash” Mahmoud, associate professor in the LSU Division of Computer
Science & Engineering and director of the LSU Software Engineering and Evolution Lab,
students are already lining up to be part of the new program and use the cyber range.
“FIREStarter will provide an unprecedented opportunity for our students, across all
concentrations of computer science, to get hands-on experience in cyber security and
threat analysis,” Mahmoud said. “They will fill an important workforce gap and have
a clear advantage in the job market.”
“Women hold only 11% of cyber security jobs worldwide, and FIREStarter could be a way to change that.”—LSU Professor Juana Moreno
“We are also planning to be inclusive and make an effort to publicize this opportunity
to all students, including women and underrepresented minorities,” said Juana Moreno,
professor in the LSU Department of Physics & Astronomy with a joint appointment in
the LSU Center for Computation & Technology. “As an example, women hold only 11% of
cyber security jobs worldwide, and FIREStarter could be a way to change that.”
Louisiana State Police will provide LSU with an experienced analyst from its Cyber
Crime Unit to teach two new cybersecurity classes at LSU. These classes will help
bridge the knowledge gap for beginning computer science students and train them on
incident response. Additionally, this learning experience will prepare the students
to enroll in more advanced courses in memory forensics, malware analysis, reverse
engineering, and exploit development at LSU.
LONI, Louisiana’s LSU-managed high-speed optical network, can be used to transmit
information securely between educational institutions in the state and is powered
by the Queen Bee supercomputers on LSU’s main campus. It will broaden access to the
LSU cyber range for any participating partner connected to its network via roughly
1,700 miles of fiber optic cable.
Lonnie Leger, executive director of LONI, likens the LSU cyber range to a virtual
firing range.
“You can handle a weapon in offensive and defensive positions as long as you learn
how to use that tool ethically,” Leger said. “The cyber range will allow our students
and all of our partners to do so in a safe and controlled environment.”
“At LSU, our focus is on producing top-tier cybersecurity practitioners and researchers—
essentially, cybersecurity superheroes,” Richard said. “The cyber range will make
this effort easier, across the cybersecurity curriculum, by allowing us to offer additional
hands-on, practical education in both offensive and defensive cybersecurity. Beyond
formal coursework, the range gives us a platform to host capture-the-flag and other
events to attract student attention early. Finally, FIREStarter strengthens our relationships
with state and industrial partners and opens up new collaborative opportunities for
students. It’s going to make a huge difference.”
The Hunt for New Hackers (LSU Office of Research & Economic Development)
LSU Awarded $3.4 Million NSF Cybersecurity Training Grant (LSU College of Engineering)
Elsa Hahne
LSU Office of Research & Economic Development
ehahne@lsu.edu
Contact Ernie Ballard
LSU Media Relations
225-978-8277
eballa1@lsu.edu
Contact Alison Satake
LSU Media Relations
510-816-8161
asatake@lsu.edu